insults, injuries and a proper singsong

Good morning, QPR fans! For many of us, today brings the league fixture which is more eagerly anticipated than any other. So we offer a warm West London welcome to our dear friends from the dustbins of Crawley and Redhill and from the pricier parts of Richmond and Barnes. Here they come, swaggering along the Uxbridge Road. "E-D-EDL! E-D-EDL!" sing the Crawley boys. "There's only one Jason Marriner!" comes the cry from the Redhill mob. Then the Barnes brigade strike real fear into the hearts of the home supporters as they break into a rousing chorus of their own special song. "Caaaaaaaaaaarefree!! Wherever you may be! We are the famous CFC! Please sit down, my wife can't see! Loyal supporter since 2003!"

Harping on about old nonsense?
Singsongwise, the QPR side of the equation may run to the revival of some recent favourites and the invention of some new ditties. A popular number sung at last season's Stamford Bridge debacle, to the tune of Nel blu dipinto di blu, made the suggestion that Pensioners skipper John Terry "knees you in the back" and "hates you if you're black".

The latter barb, of course, relates to that unsavoury incident which occurred on the Loftus Road pitch during the season's earlier and fierier encounter. That the Rangers prevailed 1-0 that day is a fact that seems to have been overshadowed in the popular imagination by the long and dismal saga which has unfolded as a result of the incident. One day, perhaps, the fact that Terry uttered the words "fucking black cunt" on the field of play will be forgotten and this particular fixture will proceed without widespread references to that fact in the media and on the various online space where keyboard warriors do battle.

In the meantime, though, last season's nonsense will continue to cast a shadow over tomorrow's game. So, once again, we must endure speculation about whether the tedious, unnecessary and only recently contrived pre-match handshake ritual will proceed smoothly or prove to be some sort of flashpoint. At least this time we know that it will go ahead in some shape or form, the great football authorities having decided that it must. 

It is less certain, though, to what degree John Terry will be singled out for especially hostile treatment by the Loftus Road crowd. Online chatter suggests opinions are divided. Some Superhoops supporters are looking forward gleefully to another opportunity to express particular disdain for the opponents' skipper. Others take the view that it is time to forget last season's incidents and simply concentrate on the match itself.

Same old FA: always cheating
But it is easy to understand the feelings of those who do want to keeping picking at that John Terry-shaped scab, not least because the inept goons of the Football Association have allowed the stink to linger for so many months. Sure, it was not down to the FA that Terry's criminal trial was delayed until July, a full nine months after the Chelsea man's altercation with QPR centre-half Anton Ferdinand. No, if you're looking for someone to blame for slowing down the wheels of British justice in this case, look no further than Pensioners CEO Ron Gourlay, who breezily told the court that a trial during the season would hinder his team's chances of success. But why the delay between July's criminal trial and the FA's own hearing about Terry's abusive language? It seems farcical in the extreme for that procedure not to have already taken place. For that lapse of common sense (or common decency?), we can only look to the FA itself. Similarly, we must question the wisdom and decency of the decision to allow Terry to be selected for England duty while that FA investigation is pending. We can also question the wisdom and decency of the man who picks the England team. Roy Hodgson, surely previously considered by almost everyone to be a decent sort of chap, has rather blotted his copybook of late. It's bad enough that he selected the Chelsea defender for the recent tie in Moldova. But Hodgson's more egregious lapse of good judgement was to express the "hope" that the former England Captain would be "freed" of his pending FA charge. This is very bad form - a senior employee of an organisation speaking out about an unconcluded disciplinary procedure concerning someone in his charge. How can that not be taken as prejudicial to the case? 

The long delay in having Terry answer his FA charges stands in stark contrast to the swiftness with which Anton's older brother was dealt with over a matter closely related to this sorry saga. Rio Ferdinand had retweeted another person's now infamous "choc ice" description of Chelsea's Ashley Cole. For this offence, the Manchester United player was rapidly ordered to pay a £45,000 fine. In light of this, it seems impossible not to conclude that two miscreants have been treated very differently by the FA.

A cynic, therefore, would conclude that John Terry gets special treatment. Is that because, unlike Rio, he's still a contender for the England team and still a favourite of Roy Hodgson's? It could well be. After all, there is no reason to suppose that the FA is not run by incompetent and corrupt people. There is just too much evidence to the contrary. Take your pick from the Association's obvious share of the blame for the Hillsborough disaster, the criminal waste of money on a vastly overpriced national stadium and the revolving door hiring policy with regard to expensive and ineffective national team managers. 

Proud English lions? Yeah, right

That the FA seems to give John Terry special treatment made the Association look particularly stupid this week. Having sustained a knock in Chişinău, the Chelsea man was ruled out of contention for England's more challenging home tie against Ukraine. But guess what? He's fit enough to play at Loftus Road today! It's a miracle!

No it isn't. You don't have to be a dyed-in-the-wool conspiracy nut to see that the Pensioners skipper could have made himself available for the midweek Ukraine game and that he simply chose to shirk England duty in order to ensure he would be able to play for his club side. This gives lie to the spurious idea that Terry is a proud English patriot prepared to put his body on the line for England. Terry, then, has mugged off the Association which does him special favours.

The same goes for his Stamford Bridge team-mate Ashley Cole, who also failed to turn up at Wembley but who will, it seems, be on duty for his club today. So if you're looking to spread the blame for England's failure to beat Ukraine, do keep these two malingerers in mind. Further, should England fail to qualify for the World Cup, do remember to look back at this week's match and keep in mind which players ducked out of the game but still managed to put in a shift for Chelsea just days later.

The presence of these two dishonest men, of course, will make a hard match harder still for the home side today. After all, you'd much rather see our forward(s) running at David "Sidehow Bob" Luiz than the crafty old bastard in the no. 26 shirt; and while Ashley Cole may be a particularly horrible human specimen in so many ways, he does remain one of the world's better left-backs. But for some QPR fans, the presence of these two miscreants is not altogether a bad thing. This is certainly true for those who do want to focus their bile on particular players in the visiting side and who do not feel inclined to put the Anton-Terry incident behind them. But remember, folks, both clubs contesting today's tie have issued stern warnings about what is and what isn't acceptable when it comes to expressing one's feelings during the match. So, on the basis of its homophobic overtones, the following song (to the tune of Sloop John B) is not reasonable:

"You're John Terry's bitch, You're John Terry's bitch, Bend over Ashley, You're John Terry's bitch"

The reference here, of course, is to the perception that Cole's defence of Terry in that court case was a particularly craven piece of toadying. But forget it, right? This song does not fit the guidelines within which we must behave today so absolutely no one must sing it, OK?

More acceptable, perhaps, is another ditty (tune: Cwm Rhondda/Bread of Heaven) that relates to the Terry saga and the shocking idea that perhaps the Chelsea Captain really IS a racist:

"Does Nick Griffin? Does Nick Griffin? Does Nick Griffin know you're here?" 

One advantage of this song is that it can equally well be directed at Terry himself and at anyone in the School End who breaks out into a chorus of "Anton Ferdinand, You know what you are."

Long odds... but let's 'ave it

Anyway, what of the match itself? Well, the Rangers' hopes of victory are surely fairly slim and doubtless many QPR supporters would be delighted with a draw. Perhaps the presumed debut of Julio Cesar in goal  makes a positive outcome a bit more likely. Maybe that man Granero will build on his encouraging first outing in a Rangers shirt a couple of weeks ago. But have no doubt - our chaps have a real task on their hands today. The visitors have a galaxy of expensive talent, not least Eden Hazard, already a very popular choice for fantasy football managers everywhere. But maybe Hazard can be rattled. Think back to how Juan Mata refused to take corners at Loftus Road last season. These fancy footwork millionaire types? They don't like it up 'em. They do not like it up 'em. So everyone going along to W12 today is urged to do their duty and get behind the Rangers. Let's 'ave it.

U RRRRRRRRRRRRRssssssssssss

SATAN

so I'm walking down to the station
on a nice bright morning and
god's in his heaven and
all's well with the world and
then this bloke appears from a side turning,
riding his bike on the pavement
on the other side of the street:
a man of thirty-five or forty,
his front wheel wobbles as one hand
comes off the handlebar and slides
into his pocket
for a cigarette.
he spits a piece of chewing gum
onto the paving slabs outside the nursery school and
weaves his tyre tracks 
into the little lawn
at the front of those new apartments.
cigarette lit,
he zips downhill,
then diagonally across the road
just ahead of the junction and
straight through the red lights,
mounting the pavement
on the other side.
and I think
SATAN.

and on the train
this tool
in an M&S suit
and a Thomas Pink shirt
gets on halfway through my journey,
sits next to me and steadily widens
the gap between his thighs.
he is trying to push his way from his seat onto mine and wipe ME
against the wipe-CLEAN plastic-coated
carriage wall,
and his elbow
is working into the tender space
above my hip. jabbing, jabbing.
and he's tutting 
as I push back a bit
and I'm going to say
"are you trying to sit on my lap, you cunt?
are you fucking winding me up?"
but I don't.

Leon Knight: any lessons for the unwise?

Back in July, this is my england made a few remarks about the failed journeyman footballer Leon Knight. The itinerant forward had just hit the headlines for unleashing a torrent of seriously unpleasant Twitter abuse towards the wife of Wolves midfielder Jamie O'Hara.

For Knight, this was not out of character. Despite being the father of a young girl, his output on Twitter made clear that he dislikes women, speaking about the opposite sex purely in degrading and hateful terms. To the former striker, now unemployed and on the scrapheap at just twenty-nine, young women are all to be dismissed as sluts and slags. 

Anyone observing all of this who has even just a cursory knowledge of the Malicious Communications Act (1988) may well have been thinking that it's only a matter of time before Leon Knight's online antics are interrupted by the long arm of the law. Rumour now has it that this has indeed come to pass. Because last night, having made the move from casual written abuse to a more elaborately planned and really disgusting stunt, it seems that the much-travelled striker may well have been arrested. There is certainly chitchat to that effect circulating on Twitter right now. Time will tell, no doubt, if there is substance to those rumours because an arrest in Knight's case would be sure to get some media attention. In the meantime, we do know that his Twitter account has been suspended.

Dirty pictures: maybe not a good idea?
So what was that disgusting stunt? Well, the vile little creep spent several days tweeting regularly to drum up interest in a nasty and presumably illegal exercise. He encouraged other idiots and other people of low character to email him compromising photographs of young women. With Knight having tens of thousands of Twitter followers and with this world being generously supplied with utter wankers, it seems that his appeal yielded a fairly plentiful supply of smut. As far as can be made out from Twitter activity, it seems that horrible sods were sending in intimate photos of ex-girlfriends or of girls with whom they had more casual sexual contact.

At this point, you are warmly invited to question the wisdom of any person who allows another person to make a digital image of that nature. Stories about the repercussions of this are rife and widely known. A girl allows a boyfriend to take an explicit photo of her. The couple break up. The boy decides to forward the picture on to schoolmates, possibly as an act vengeance if his fragile pride has been wounded by the breakup. The picture circulates more widely, and before long the girl has been thoroughly humiliated. The possibility of really serious effects on her mental health and self-esteem cannot be discounted.

But not everyone is wise. People, especially young people, do make mistakes. It's not hard to imagine a girl believing herself to be in love and feeling some pressure to please her boyfriend by consenting to have a compromising picture taken. She believes him when he says the image is just for his own pleasure. Perhaps at the moment he makes the promise, he really is speaking in good faith. But feelings change. Rejection follows. Egos are bruised. It's horrible. But it happens. 

Moreover, if a young man does something like this once and then regrets his actions, perhaps he is not to be condemned forever as a nasty piece of work. Perhaps it teaches him something about other people's feelings, about actions having sometimes very serious consequences and about what it means to be thought of as someone lacking decency. It's a terrible way to learn lessons of that sort, but it's not beyond the realms of possibility that redemption could follow such a stupid and horrible act.

Premeditated nastiness 
But Leon Knight was planning something of this nature on an almost industrial scale. It was also clear that he was not acting on a sudden impulse. This was a proper project for him, premeditated and carefully worked out. Earlier this week, his follower count on Twitter was under 70,000. By last night, having spread the word about his planned 'slag alert' stunt, this number had risen to over 100,000. So any pictures shared by the former footballer would have reached a far wider audience than those spread in the usual instances of this kind of harassment. Knight also intended to identify by name the girls in the pictures, using their Twitter account names if he had them. In the build-up to his planned stunt, he was taking obvious delight in the inevitable fallout. He was laughing at the prospect of girls' current relationships breaking down as a result of his antics. More than once, he taunted women he knew to be married or engaged, delighting in the prospect of them being dumped by embarrassed or angered husbands and fiancés. It's easy to come to the conclusion that Knight would take pleasure from the idea of having ruined someone's life. 

It seems, however, that his plan did not reach its conclusion. It appears that pictures were deleted as soon as he posted them and that the suspension of his account swiftly followed. A number of wags are right now repeating the joke that Knight's #SAP stunt turned out to be roughly as successful as his football career.

There are rivers of shit out there in cyberspace. An ocean of ordure. Every day, the details of some horrible personality or the workings of some deranged mind are mainlined into our homes. Leon Knight has both, and it is to be applauded that his latest and more ambitious piece of nastiness has fallen flat.

So what lessons can be drawn from this sorry incident (or non-incident, if you prefer)?

Well, one rather depressing aspect of this dismal affair is that a pretty large number of young men were out there condoning Knight's unpleasantness, offering him encouragement and eagerly anticipating a deluge of humiliating filth. Of course, you would be forgiven for wondering how a Leon Knight fan would have reacted to seeing his own sister or girlfriend humiliated in the way that Knight was planning. That said, it was no good remonstrating with Leon's online worshippers with that line of argument. To do so was simply to court the inarticulate and hateful response of someone with no regard for decency and no empathy for his fellow human beings. A wasted effort.

Beyond this dispiriting reminder about just how many people seem to be absolute wankers, the more useful lessons are around the disjoints between the wonderful potential of digital technologies and the capacity of our culture to agree on how best to enjoy them.

Upside with the downside
If you're old enough to remember living before the digital age really got going then you may sometimes marvel at the changes you've seen. Remember what it was like before everyone had mobile phones? Meeting up with friends was different then, wasn't it? You had to specify an exact time and place, and you would sometimes hang around for ages wondering why your pals were running late. Also, certain kinds of spontaneity which are possible now were not possible then. For instance, these days, if you decide at the last moment to go to your local pub or to a game of football, you can text a few friends to see who's around and up for a drink and chat. When you add the broadcast functionality of social media to the immediacy of mobility this becomes more powerful still. As you head down to the boozer or the football ground, you can update your Facebook status and/or write a tweet to let your associates know what you're up to. Pretty quickly you will know who is out and about. All very useful. Do today's youngsters realise quite how much these now ubiquitous technologies have transformed the daily lives of their elders?

Digital photography and digital video have also been massive game changers. Creating still pictures and moving images used to be expensive. Remember what it was like with a film camera? You would go on holiday with a couple of rolls of film, each with thirty-six exposures. You'd worry about wasting a shot and you'd take ages getting the family lined up in a grinning group. What a disappointment if that one snap of your happy clan in front of a popular landmark was spoiled by mum having her eyes closed or by part of someone's body being cut out of the picture. But now? You just rattle off the images at speed. Take ten pics of something and one of them is sure to be half-decent. You can just delete the others if you get close to filling the massive capacity of the memory card on your camera or, for that matter, the pretty decent camera now built into many popular mobile phones.

Consider your digital footprint 
The volume and variety of data generated by ordinary punters are increasing with giddying speed. We now create as much information every two days as the human race managed to create between the dawn of civilisation and the year 2003. In the specific case of video, YouTube users now upload more content in any given sixty days than all three major US television network created in sixty years. We can all be photographers. We can all be film makers. We can all be artists. We can all be publishers. This is empowering. Potentially, it represents a form of democratisation. But it comes with dangers and it comes with responsibilities that many people simply don't seem to understand. Too many people fail to realise that making a digital image or writing a comment online potentially leaves an indelible mark that may one day be bitterly regretted.

Perhaps you are involved in hiring people. Perhaps you will be involved in considering an employee for promotion. Maybe you will have some influence on someone's admission or otherwise to a course of study. Perhaps you are considering doing business with someone. In any one of these contexts, you might well Google a person's name to get a bit of insight into their character, their background or their interests. If you see something you don't like perhaps you will quickly eliminate that person from your plans.

It's a little frightening that so many people learn how to use a mouse and keyboard or the functions of a mobile phone without also acquiring a sense of the dangers around certain kinds of online behaviour. Compare this with the business of getting a driver's licence. To do so, one must demonstrate the ability not only to operate a vehicle in the most basic way but also the ability to drive safely. Learner drivers are appraised of the dangers they will pose to themselves and to other road users. Only when the learner can prove that these dangers have been understood can the licence be handed over. There is, however, probably no equivalent way of limiting online activity only to those able to demonstrate the ability to use communications technologies responsibly. This is a shame, really, given the daily evidence of both self-destruction and harm to others that thoughtless and spiteful online behaviour can cause.

An army of idiots?
this is my england has followed a number of examples of this over the last few months. Back in March, we saw Welsh student Liam Stacey making a name for himself by racially abusing Fabrice Muamba as the Bolton player lay unconscious on the White Hart Lane pitch. Very shortly afterwards, Stacey's comeuppance arrived in the form of arrest by South Wales Police and suspension from his university.

But despite the prominence of Stacey's case, it has become apparent that some idiots have either never heard of it or have failed to learn from it. Take the case of Alan Haywood, a West Ham fan from Southend. Outraged by his team's capitulation to a rampant Swansea City side, Haywood took out his frustration by directing racist abuse towards Hammers striker Carlton Cole:

At the time, this is my england made the confident prediction that Haywood would be arrested. So it came to pass. Of course, you are welcome to debate the issue of whether the police and our legal system have responded to this in a manner disproportionate to the nature of the offence. Perhaps you consider it to be an erosion of freedom of speech if one person is denied the opportunity to address another as a "fucking useless nigger cunt". Perhaps you consider the words "fucking useless nigger cunt" to constitute the expression of an opinion rather than as simply an act of harassment. That's entirely up to you, of course. For now, though, the prevailing trend seems to be that behaving in this way will lead to arrest and imprisonment.

Even if you don't like this provision of our legal system, you have to live with it. So by all means write an article in which you argue the case for people being allowed to say absolutely anything to absolutely anyone without fear of legal consequences. But until you get your desired change in our laws (and in the way our laws are applied), you need to realise that saying certain things in certain ways will get you in trouble. Moreover, using Twitter and other social media to say those certain things may have quite long-lasting consequences. Liam Stacey, for instance, has at least delayed his career progress, if not fatally stalled his ambitions before he really got started on making them a reality. Alan Haywood, too, may find that his idiocy follows him around and causes him more trouble for a while yet.

Forget Leon Knight and think about your own online life
The likes of Alan Haywood and Liam Stacey actually don't look too bad when compared with the vile and persistent trolling of Leon Knight. Haywood and Stacey are undeniably idiots, young men who failed to understand the potential consequences of their online outbursts. Knight's actions, on the other hand, were altogether more premeditated. At one stage last night, he was even responding to suggestions that he would be arrested with taunts, inviting his detractors to call the police. Knight, then, it must be assumed, is either seriously mentally ill or has a personality disorder of some kind. Probably, no lessons can really be drawn from his actions because hardly anyone else would go to so much trouble to get in trouble. 

One lesson that can, perhaps, be learned from Knight's abortive stunt, though, is around the wisdom of letting someone take a compromising photo of you, however much you currently love or trust that person. Equally, if you already live by the useful idea of 'think before you speak' in the physical world, then you may want to check whether you apply that principle online.

Digital technologies: changing faster than we get get our heads around the risks which come along with the useful functionalities. So let's be careful out there.

that's really funny

the first year I lived in Poland
I lived alone,
something like six storeys up
a building that swayed in a wind which whipped in
from east to west, starting out beyond the steppes
of central Asia
and gathering speed across the low
green Świętokrzyskie Mountains.
and on the evenings when the power went out,
I'd sit on the floor, reading Bukowski by candlelight and
eating meatballs or bigos heated on the little gas stove, and
I never complained
about the lack of furniture
or about sleeping on a very thin foam-rubber mattress
or about the graffiti
and the shaven-headed teenage smokers
on the stairwell
of the block.

I liked the solitude,
I liked it better than coming home
to the sound of someone else's voice
and the tutting and the post-it notes
about not rinsing out the bathtub
about not double-locking the door
about all that stuff
you have to worry about
when you share a place
because working your drop-out job
pays far too little
to buy you
even the smallest space
in which to be
alone.

but ten months in Kielce was enough.
it was unlovely,
with its little bits of life and light
all seemingly straggled
along one long central street,
ulica Henryka Sienkiewicza.
and all that was
was a couple of places
to eat bad pizza
or drink a beer in a cellar,
worrying that some arsehole
in a bad tonic suit
might shoot some other arsehole
in a bad tonic suit, and
all the time
not knowing enough of the language
to know how dangerous
those fuckers really were.

don't get me wrong,
there were some good people there,
hardened into humour, ready to share
their homes, their food
and their stories
with this young Englishman
who was crazy enough
to spend time
scratching out a living
in their out-of-the way town.
yeah, don't get me wrong,
before and after the snow came
I liked to walk arm in arm with this one young girl,
this smart little Anna,
through the untidy parks and
across the cobbled marketplace
where peasant women
in tight headscarves
sold their potatoes, their plums,
their jars of fat.

so I took the offer
of a bigger city, taking my few things
to Kraków,
not suspecting,
of course,
that I'd be there,
in love with the place,
in love with everything going on there and
in love with one maddening girl there
and in lust
with a few more there
for a few more years
after that.

for the first few months
the only bad part about having moved there
was needing to live in the same apartment
as a pretty curious fellow who worked
in the same place as me.

this was Chuck, an American,
a graduate
of a state university in New England,
and a native of the Connecticut suburbs
to the north
of NYC.
curious? yes, yes, curious.
a real weirdo, in fact,
but harmless.

he had a small number of ageing checked shirts
which he buttoned right to the throat, and
a small number of pairs of fading jeans
that he tucked tightly
into these stupid looking
pale brown waterproof duck boots
just as soon as a few drops of rain were heard falling
past the windows
of the flat.

he was a man of strange habits.
for instance, he was particular about the way he ate his cornflakes.
he would pour a layer of the cornflakes
from the packet
to the bowl, then
he'd splash on a little milk and then he'd pat down the cornflakes,
using the back of his spoon.
pat pat pat. like he wanted the cornflakes to lie perfectly flat.
then he would pour on more flakes
then more milk and then go
pat pat pat
again, with the spoon,
pat pat pat.
over and over this went,
four or five layers of cornflakes
applied in this way.
oh, and the whole time
he did this
he was standing up,
with his spoon held right out at arm's length.
it was one of the damnedest things I've ever seen
and he did it like that every morning
for all the mornings I lived there.

and he was obsessively tight with money.
I mean, we all earned nothing in real money,
our wage in złoty,
well it would make you wince
to convert it to dollars or pounds.
but everything was still cheap there then.
I never worried about what I spent.
there was no point saving,
'cos as soon as you went home for Christmas or whatever,
the cash was really worthless.
so you'd eat in restaurants,
take pretty girls to the cinema,
spend all night in bars,
get haircuts,
go to the football matches
and always have a little left over
when payday came around again.
but not Chuck. he watched everything he spent,
and he took to schlepping right across the city
just to get to a supermarket
where things were a fraction cheaper.
he used to head off with this little shopping trolley,
one of those two-wheelers that old ladies use,
and he'd load the thing with cartons and cartons
of fruit juice
that cost a little less
than the same thing
from the all-night convenience store
forty paces
from our front door.
we were on the third floor and I'd hear him
and his trolley
coming up the stairs
with all those cartons.
slap, slap, slap,
as he dragged it
up from the street.

Chuck was also a very strange guy to talk to.
he didn't really get jokes,
he listened in complete silence
when someone else spoke,
not giving back any signals.
then sometimes,
at the end of somebody telling him a story
about something they'd done
or something they'd seen,
he would say,
without smiling,
and with no laughter in his voice,
"that's really funny".

he was strange about women.
I know he really lusted after this one red-haired girl
from Manchester
who was also working in the city
and who wandered into our workplace one day,
looking for other English-speaking people she could hang out with.
but he never made any move on her
and he seemed more painfully silent
and shy than ever
when she was around.
and then one night
he saw me walking somewhere with her,
from one bar to another, I guess,
we were drunk
and holding onto each other for support,
tottering about
in the dark.
and that's all it was. I wasn't into her.
but he kind of confronted me.
a day later.
asking why I'd been with this girl,
what I'd been doing and
didn't I know
that he liked her.
there was a flash of violence
in the usually unperturbed eye
of this bloody American fruitcake.
I was, seriously, like
what the fuck are you on, Chuck?
cool it, brother. really.
for fuck's sake.
anyway, this didn't go on forever.
pretty soon I was living in a big house full of boisterous Poles,
wild parties
and the sweet smoke of cannabis.

anyway, that was all years and years ago.
it sometimes shocks me to realise that it's fifteen years now
since I finally came back from Poland for good.
yes, I have seen him since. he stayed in touch by email,
back when people were starting to get into email.
he used to send these very very long messages,
describing everything he'd done for months and months,
where he was working, how much money he was making,
how he was back at his parents' place, how he started to make money
selling stuff on eBay,
back when people were starting to get into eBay.
and he'd tell me
about trips back to Poland, where he'd always meet a new girl,
a girl with whom he had exchanged emails or whatnot
prior to getting on the plane from New York.
and these trips of his, well it broke your heart to hear about them.
he'd fly three or four thousand miles or whatever it is,
with the idea that the Polish chick waiting for him
was actually waiting for him,
when in fact all she'd done
was say "yeah OK"
when he suggested meeting up.
in a couple of these stories he told,
the girl wasn't even in her home town when he arrived from the USA.
generally he managed to embarrass them into showing up at some stage,
but he seemed impervious to the rejection
and kept doing it every summer.
different girls. same results.
in one message back
I asked him why he didn't just get together with someone in the States,
meaning a woman living close by.
he never answered.

then I was getting married
and he sort of invited himself to the wedding.
it was hard to say no.
I'm glad he wasn't in time for my stag weekend.
the frenzied screaming at the football,
the jibes of my old mates,
the blizzard of cocaine.
well, it wouldn't have been his scene,
and the boys would have been all like
who the fuck is this bloke?
but there he was
at the wedding with,
guess what?
a confused-looking Polish girl in tow,
a girl who visibly didn't feel attracted to him.
and then,
a few months after that,
my wife and I were in America, and we wanted to spend
new year's eve in Manhattan,
getting wasted,
eating,
shopping.
all that.
so of course I mentioned it in an email,
and of course he showed up one December afternoon.
and guess what?
he had those fucking duck boots on.
actually the same pair, I think,
something like eleven years
after I'd first seen them
in the hallway of the flat in Kraków
and wondered what they were.
he also had these fuzzy earmuffs on.
it looked ridiculous
and my wife felt awkward, shuffling around an art gallery in New York,
me, her
and this funny dude.
and he suggested a place to eat, and it was decent enough,
which surprised me, because I remembered him only eating in the cheapest places you could find.
and, at his suggestion, we had wine. and the wine was kind of expensive,
but what the hell. we were on holiday. and we were doing OK moneywise.
and we'd be splitting the bill, right?

no, he got up and walked out to the toilet when the waiter brought the bill,
and he was out there long enough for me to realise
that me meant for us to pay.
I didn't get angry. I guess he was broke,
having lost another job to which he wasn't suited,
having spent years, by then, living with mom and pop.
again, sort of heartbreaking really.
so we paid. and he dashed off to catch his bus back to Connecticut.

the last time we saw him
I decided enough was enough. this time he was really a pest.

our kid was just a few months old,
I had a lot on at work,
and it wasn't an especially convenient time.
but Chuck wrote to say that this time he was going to look around England
rather than Poland and I said OK when he asked could he come stay with us for a short time.

he drove my wife crazy.
how can you talk to this fucking guy? she asked.
all he does is just list how much he's paid for really banal things
and tell me he got a good deal on this or that.
it's maddening. he doesn't listen to what the other person's saying.
get him out of here, she said. find a way of not being a shit about it.
but get him out of here.
so I did.
well, I just said it was a little bit more of a strain than we'd expected,
that my missus wasn't really feeling up to having house guests,
what with the boy being so young and waking us up
a zillion times a night.
so he was off.
but not before telling me about his trip to Newcastle, a couple of weeks before he'd come to stay with us.
he'd emailed some girl he'd met online on some chat site or something.
she'd said sure look me up.
so he went to bloody Newcastle of all places,
only to find she wasn't there.
terrible.
poor bastard.

I guess he's somewhere on the autistic spectrum
and I guess that shit with the cornflakes and the saving money
is some kind of OCD.
you want to dislike him. because that would be easier.
but I guess I'm not quite as hard-hearted as I tell myself I am.

I wonder when he'll turn up next.

a bird in the hand is worth

WESTISBEST

just another quiet week at QPR

Wow. What a week to be a QPR supporter. 

Incredibly, having added more new blood to the squad than any other Premier League club, the Rangers did continue to make more signings as the transfer window deadline was looming. Of these, Stéphane Mbia looks to be an astute addition. His thirty-six caps for a pretty good footballing nation (Cameroon) suggest that the former Marseille man is no mug. Another plus is his versatility. The twenty-six year old Yaoundé-born player can apparently operate as a defensive midfielder and at centre-half. The latter position is certainly one about which many Rangers fans had concerns, and the opening day debacle at home to Swansea City only raised this level of concern about the robustness of the back line. So it really is to be hoped that Mbia adds some much-needed steel in this area. A pity, then, that the deal was only done late last night, meaning that the  versatile Cameroonian cannot make his debut at the Etihad Stadium this afternoon because even without the stricken Aguero in their side, it seems inconceivable that Manchester City will not manage to score today. Expect, therefore, to see Rob Green picking the ball out from the back of the net at least a couple of times, not least if our goalie's confidence has been affected by the prospect of competing for this place with another new arrival, the former Inter Milan 'keeper Julio Cesar, a much-capped Brazilian with five Serie A titles to his name. The South American is not able to play right away, there seemingly being the matter of a work permit to sort out, hence Green's inclusion in the team today.

haters gonna hate

The Rangers' acquisition of a world-famous and well-regarded goalkeeper is one of the signings that seems to have brought out the worst in some supporters of other clubs. The later signing of Real Madrid's Esteban Granero also appeared to provoke similarly incredulous and hostile responses. Indeed, this week, any QPR fan who uses Twitter can't have failed to notice a fairly steady outpouring of bile towards our lovely little club. Why? Well, some fans of the top flight's big hitters appear to resent the idea of a club they perceive to be marginal having the temerity to compete for well-known players in the transfer market. Some supporters of our fellow Premier League makeweights, meanwhile, seem to be drawn to the idea that QPR are recklessly overspending and should therefore be accused of attempting to buy success. But who isn't? Consider the large sum of money spent by Southampton on just one player. Consider, too, the eye-watering figures that Sunderland and West Ham are prepared to pay for escapees from Wolves, one of last season's relegated sides.

On the face of it, the economics of ours club are, perhaps, a bit hard to understand. How can a recently-promoted side meet the presumably astronomical wage demands of the likes of Granero and Julio Cesar? How can a club with a small and outdated stadium, and a history of only quite modest success, persuade players of this calibre to come to Loftus Road? Well, in the case of every new signing, the player mentions having been convinced that QPR is heading towards an exciting future. The Brazilian 'keeper even went so far as to say he dreams of winning the Premier League with the Rangers. Steady on, Julio. Sounds nice. But that sort of talk will only attract more mockery. 

If you choose to be cynical or pessimistic (not unknown traits among QPR fans), you may well be worrying about the future of the club. When others suggest that the current spending on players' wages is setting us up for a Portsmouth-style meltdown, perhaps you wonder darkly if there might be some truth in that. But for that scenario to unfold, there would need to be either a major change of heart or a major change of fortunes on the part of the club's owners. Were Tony Fernandes, particularly, ever to walk away from our club and leave it in a parlous financial state, his desertion would surely go down in history as one of the most striking examples of going from hero to zero.

in Tony we trust?

Many CEOs of major businesses really struggle to understand how social media should work as part of the marketing mix for their organisations. Many of them worry about the exposure of internal corporate affairs to the scrutiny of customers and potential customers. A good number of them remain unsure about their own personal social media activity in this complicated and quickly evolving context. Fernandes, though, stands out as a CEO who embraces social media much more enthusiastically than most of his fellow business leaders. In doing so, he appears to have created a very positive personal brand, first in his home country and now among QPR fans. This will surely work to his advantage. Having closed the emotional distance between himself and Rangers supporters (and indeed between himself and customers of his various businesses), he is well positioned to ask for patience and understanding should he hit any bumps in the road. But there is a downside here. Right now he is engaging with customers and with QPR supporters and is getting a lot of love for being so approachable, personable and open. That would surely change, though, if his airline seriously failed its passengers or if his stewardship of our club were to go badly wrong. Angry people would not be railing against a faceless corporation or against a distant, unknowable figure. Instead, they would feel personally betrayed and, perhaps, rather more inflamed as a result. Would his personal brand ever recover from something like that? Perhaps not. It would be a pretty spectacular fall from grace. 

So to believe that Fernandes might lead QPR back towards the financial ruin the club so nearly faced in recent years is to believe that he is capable of seriously miscalculating the unusually open way he chooses to do business. Unless you know the man personally, perhaps its impossible to form a strong belief one way or another about how likely it is that our Chairman will one day come unstuck in that way. In the meantime, many of us choose to place our faith in the man. Thus far, the signs surely continue to be good.

in Amit we trust?

Faith in Fernandes aside, another factor that would seem to mitigate the risk of a future Portsmouth-style scenario is the presence of Amit Bhatia on the QPR board, representing his Croesus-like father-in-law. The Daily Mail's mischievous Charles Sale has suggested today that the Mittal family did seriously consider withdrawing their support for the club this summer. But, as ever with this sort of stuff, Sale's assertion lacks a quote or any other supporting evidence. Probable shit-stirring, then. After all, Bhatia continues to be visibly and vocally excited by his role at QPR. Again, you are free to believe what you want and trust who you want. But, for now, we lack evidence to support any suggestion that Amit Bhatia's appetite for our club's success is lessening.

Putting all this aside, let's hope that Mark Hughes and his staff find a way of blending these new signings into an effective team. Perhaps it's too much to ask that this will bear fruit today in Manchester. But if you can't enjoy the experience of supporting QPR now, it does beg the question whether you ever will. These are exciting times. Not without challenge. Not entirely without doubt. But exciting times nevertheless.

U RRRRRRRRRRRRssssssssss